


Body Language

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [19]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Engagement, M/M, Robots, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five hundred and twelve guests isn't over the top, right? Not for an event hosted by Tony Stark, and certainly not for this event in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body Language

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for the future of the "Terra Incognita" series. (As if the tags haven't already spoiled things enough...)

Tony was lounging on the largest couch in the Stark Towers common room late one Thursday night, clad in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and comfortable jeans, sneakered feet up on the leather cushions while he enjoyed a glass of Scotch and the latest episode of _Duck Dynasty_ on TiVo — the spectacle of other people's stupidity always filled him with profound and gleeful _schadenfreude_ —  when a soft sharp snort from the other end of the couch made him prick up both ears and go on high alert. A soft sharp snort from Kitt, to be precise, who was looking at something on the StarkPad in his lap and frowning like he'd just spotted a glitched line in his own code.  

From both desire and necessity, Tony had learned to read all the sounds that his A.I. made — although when KITT was embodied in the Knight 2000 robotic automobile, it was the silences Tony had to watch out for. If he was sitting in the car's driver's seat and the car wasn't talking to him, that was Very Bad, because KITT's pissed-off silences were the kind of deep freeze that generally accompanied ice ages and he was not the kind of person who could be jollied back into a good mood by the cheerful offer of a full wash and wax. No, when KITT-as-car went silent all Tony could really do was keep talking himself as if nothing had happened, until KITT's annoyance reached a sufficiently high level to prompt him to interrupt, usually explosively. 

When he was embodied in the Obsidian android KITT kept talking no matter how aggravated he was, often in a voice even softer and silkier than normal, but there was a certain tilt to his sleek gleaming skull and a way he had of folding his arms that constituted a clear warning — and God help you if he cocked his left hip ever so slightly, because oh _fuck_ , that meant he was _beyond_ pissed. When that point was reached Tony often just apologized as a matter of course: it saved time, and KITT would usually be happy to tell him exactly what the hell he'd done wrong. In exquisite detail. With 3D diagrams, courtesy of JARVIS. 

But when he was Kitt Silver, it was a snort through his humanoid nose — small, refined, fussy and utterly exasperated — that alerted Tony to the fact that something was on his last nerve. This particular snort, issued while the business suit clad robot sat neatly cross-legged and frowned at his screen, wasn't particularly loud: it signalled DEFCON 4, if that, and Tony dared to relax a tiny bit. Maybe it was a temporary annoyance. Maybe Kitt was just having one of his patented Moments of Snippy that seemed to come out of nowhere and vanish just as suddenly. Maybe it was — 

"Have you looked at this guest list?" Kitt groused, and Tony sighed internally and braced for impact, covering both reactions with a sip of his drink and his attention seemingly fixed on the widescreen TV. 

"'Course not. That's Pepper's job — and yours, apparently." 

Out of the corner of his eye he caught Kitt's look, which suggested that Tony was less intelligent than Si Robertson's ingrown baby toenail. "Five hundred and twelve people, Tony — not including the wedding party and escorts." 

He shrugged casually. "That doesn't sound too bad." 

"Are you joking?" Kitt protested. "That's an emerging nation-state! If I'd wanted a wedding big enough to be seen from space, I would have agreed to marry Steven Spielberg instead." 

"Who isn't into sexing up male robots," Tony mentioned into his glass, "however cute they may be when they're not busy bitching me out, so technically —" 

"The only thing that's missing from this ceremony is you arriving as Iron Man to the gyrating accompaniment of a gaggle of cheerleaders — _No!"_ He levelled a stern forefinger at Tony's widening grin. "You may _not!_ "

"But it worked so well at the Expo!" Tony nearly whined, still smirking. 

"Oh, now you're just being deliberately difficult," Kitt snapped, and shot to his feet, crossing toward the windows overlooking the nighttime skyline of New York City and turning his glare to the StarkPad in his left hand — pure window dressing, since he was permanently uplinked to JARVIS, but as Silver he was programmed to emulate human limitations whenever possible. 

"Come on, Kitten…" Resigning himself to the inevitable, Tony paused the idiots onscreen, set aside his drink and turned his full focus on his aggrieved fiancé. "It wouldn't be a Tony Stark Production — trademarked _and_ copyrighted, incidentally — if it wasn't ridiculously huge and stylish." 

Kitt didn't look impressed by this line of reasoning. "Has it possibly _not_ occurred to you that a crowd that big could easily hide an assassin? Or twenty?" 

"And has it occurred to _you_ that if anybody so much as coughs out of turn, Bruce is going to be there to Hulk out on them? Besides, who would be stupid enough to make that kind of move when there's —" 

His sudden pause brought Kitt's head up and around. "When there's — what, exactly?" 

Nonchalantly, Tony waved his left hand in a gesture of one dismissing inconsequentialities. "Never mind. Forget I —" 

Kitt looked appalled, then resigned. "You invited the media, didn't you?" 

"Only CNN. And MSNBC. And —" He coughed into his closed fist and mumbled: "— FOXNews." 

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Kitt sighed. "Does Pepper know about this?" 

"Not yet. Obviously. Or she'd have shared that little detail with you, right?" He tried to glare in turn, but all he could muster was another shrug, this one sheepish. "Kitt… I want everybody in the world — including, and maybe especially, anybody who might be tempted to take a shot at you — to see that I'm deadly serious about this. And that if they lay so much as a finger on you, I'll make sure there isn't enough of them left to fill a teaspoon." 

"After what you did to Moira, I should think that would be abundantly clear." 

"Maybe. Maybe not." He scratched at his beard and grimaced, his mind turning against his will to five of the darkest days of his entire life — days he did his level best not to think about, ever. "Let's make sure, okay?" 

Now he looked patient as well as annoyed. "Tony, you blew her head off." 

For which Tony had never experienced a nanosecond's regret. "She was less than one second away from killing you. Besides, after all the shit she pulled, can you honestly tell me that she didn't deserve it?" 

"Abducting and torturing me wasn't a crime worthy of the death penalty. But that's not what we're discussing." He lifted the StarkPad, its glowing screen full of scrolling lists turned in Tony's direction, and reverted to a no-nonsense expression. All Tony wanted to do was kiss it off his face. "Five hundred and twelve guests. And that's just for the reception! The ceremony itself —" 

"— has six hundred and sixty-four, yes, believe it or not I've been keeping track." 

"You just said you weren't." 

"I said I hadn't _looked_ at it. I didn't say I didn't know the numbers." 

Kitt looked at him like he couldn't decide whether to smack him or kiss him. "Tony —" 

"Baby," he interrupted sweetly, "if you're so concerned about it, why don't you take a few warm bodies off your side of the aisle?" 

" _My_ side of the aisle?" He pounced. "Oh, come off it! You know perfectly well that my guests only account for twelve point four percent of the grand total — and if you think I'm dumping any of them, you must be out of your one-hundred-and-eighty-two-IQ-point mind!" 

He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled in a way he was fairly sure was infuriating. "In that case, I'd say we've reached an impasse." 

"Or we could pare down the list," Kitt countered. "I'm sure Pepper would be more than happy to sit down with us both and —" 

"Aha!" Tony sat up and snapped his fingers, assuming the expression of one experiencing a revelation. "I've got it! The perfect solution!" 

Kitt raised a skeptical and downright wary eyebrow. "You do?" 

"Absolutely." He rose and crossed to the android to take firm hold of its upper arms, looking slightly up into those frowning hazel eyes with complete seriousness. "We'll elope." Kitt opened his mouth, but Tony kept right on talking: "We'll call up Reverend Gowarna and get the license fast-tracked — or better yet, we'll take the Stark Jet to Las Vegas and hit The Little White Wedding Chapel, bam-bam-boom, in and out in twenty minutes. No muss, no fuss, and all perfectly legal." 

"You're serious," Kitt retorted after a couple of seconds of obvious disbelief. 

Tony shrugged again. "The ceremony and the reception would be wonderful — and, I might add, an event that this city would wind up talking about well into the next century, not to mention constituting an all-points bulletin to the world that you're mine, full stop — but they're not the point of the exercise. Just say the word and we're off to Nevada, and I'll have Pepper cancel the entire New York —" 

"She'd have your head on a silver platter," Kitt stated. "With a side order of your own hide." 

"Do you want to get married to me?" Tony countered. 

Kitt got that look which was relatively new and which made Tony's stomach twist wonderfully with sympathy, the _I can't believe this amazing thing is happening to me!_ expression. "Yes, of course I do!" 

Tony raised both eyebrows. "And, you don't want a huge wedding." 

"I never said that. I just…" He glanced away toward the jewelled city beyond the windows, his frown deepening again and his voice falling to a much softer inflection: "Are you sure you want to do this, Tony? Absolutely sure?" 

It was Tony's turn to scowl as he curved his right hand around Kitt's left jaw, turning the android's face back toward his own. "Come on — this is _me_ you're talking about here. Contrary to popular belief, I always know exactly what I'm doing. Well, almost always. About the important things. And this," giving Kitt's cheek a pat and a caress, "is _the_ most important thing right now." 

"I'm a machine, Tony." 

Which made him roll his eyes. "God, for a second there you sounded just like Pepper." 

"Who you still love, incidentally." 

"About five orders of magnitude less than I love you." He studied Kitt's solemn face more keenly. "Have I said anything, even one word, to make you think —?" 

Kitt shook his head at once. "No, of course not." 

Which made him tilt his head in turn, his own annoyance quotient rising alongside a kind of simmering dread. "Then I'm not seeing what the problem is here." 

But Kitt wasn't looking at him like someone contemplating changing his answer to _No, Tony Stark, you're not fit company for anybody, much less for me_. Quite the opposite, in fact: he looked almost painfully yearning. "It's all so much, so fast. If my original creators could see me now — legally a person, embodied in a vessel indistinguishable from human, with a pilot who's considering _marrying_ me…" A hesitation. He ducked his chin and cast down his eyes, his voice sinking almost to a murmur: "I — I just wish that Michael was still here to see it. Which would have made _us_ impossible, but I know he would have been so proud of me." 

Tony couldn't help but smile at him fondly. "If he was still here, and he saw you like this, he'd probably be down on one knee himself." 

Kitt shook his head, but he glanced back up again, and he was smiling. "Michael was the most relentlessly heterosexual individual it's ever been my privilege to meet — well, with a few tiny exceptions of conduct, but I'm fairly sure he was completely unaware of them." 

"Oh?" Tony's ears pricked up all over again. "Do tell?" 

"He called me 'hot' on three occasions, and 'baby' five separate times in the course of our partnership. However, since I never saw him so much as look at another man —" 

"Kitt, you sexy devil!" He laughed out loud, leaning in to kiss him warmly. "Corrupting good red-blooded American males at every turn! No wonder I like you so much." 

"I thought you loved me," Kitt retorted with a rare full-out grin. "Isn't that the point of what we're arguing over?" 

"True enough." Tony kissed him again, just because he was shining so bright, then couldn't resist the urge to step closer and slip his left arm around that slender waist and kiss him a third time, more slowly and deeply. "And I notice you didn't answer my question."  

"Because it's patently ridiculous." Kitt tilted his head against Tony's hand and looked down at him like he was the silliest and most precious person on the entire planet. "It will be my privilege and my honour to stand with you in front of New York's biggest church, crammed full of people, and declare that we belong to each other while the rest of the world watches by remote. I suppose when it's viewed in those terms, five hundred and twelve people —" 

"— plus the wedding party —"  

"— doesn't seem like so much." 

He pasted on a plaintive expression. "But no cheerleaders?" 

"No cheerleaders," Kitt said flatly. 

Time to wheedle. "Even if I pare sixteen guests off my side of the list to make —?" 

"Tony…" A warning drawl accompanied by a significant stare from beneath lowered brows, but that quirk of the left side of his mouth was as eloquent as any of his other kinesic signals. 

Tony grinned broadly and shut the hell up. He was smart enough to recognize when he was beaten — and when, paradoxically, he'd also managed to win. 

THE END


End file.
